The Emergency Medical Service Operations Centre (OS ZZS) on Wednesday scrapped the tender aimed at evaluating applications to operate ambulance service stations.
Health Minister Kamil Šaško (Hlas-SD) said on Monday (August 11) that the ambulance service tender would be scrapped in a lawful manner. He claimed that according to the first results of the analyses that he requested last week from OS ZZS, legal uncertainty had arisen that could have allowed a different interpretation of the legal regulation of the ongoing tender.
On Monday, OS ZZS chief Marian Povolny resigned from his post and was replaced the following day by Jozef Hricka, who was appointed to the position by the Health Minister. Hricka previously worked as a healthcare analyst at the University Hospital and at the state-owned VsZP health insurance company.
The ambulance service tender was criticised by the opposition and by the coalition SNS. The opposition parties on Friday (August 8) initiated a no-confidence motion in Šaško, although SNS announced it would not vote with the opposition, as this would violate the coalition agreement. A special session to deal with the minister's ouster was supposed to start at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. The session was unable to be opened and has been postponed.
Source: TASR
